The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1887-01-07
TOO PIoUs.

Senator Blair, as the representative in
the United States Senate of the truly
good and pious element in America,
now presents batch of petitions ask
ing Congress to pass a law to prohibit
the running of railway trains on Sun
day. He will probably follow these
with bill for the purpose named, and
will follow that with some of his long
winded speeches in advocacy OF the
scheme, just as if the thing were prac-
ticable or possible. There should be
reason in all things, in the matter of
Sunday observance as we'll as any thin
else; but there is neither sense nor rea-
son in the proposition to put out the
locomotive fires and bring the railroad
world to a standstill twenty
four hours every seven days. 1t
would be almost as reasonable
to propose to stop hens from laying on
Sunday, or do any other ridiculous
thing. The American people, or ma
jority of them. want a Christian Sab
bath; they ask rest and quiet on that
day and demand the discontinuance of
all unnecessary labor. the suspension
of trafic where it can be done without
detriment TO the public, and the sup
preston of the noisy worldly pleasures;
but they do not ask so unreasonable
thing as the stoppage of railway pas
senger trains from Saturday night I'M
til Monday morning. They do ask that
such trains as can reasonably be
laid off, be stopped, that employees
may observe the Sunday in a
Christianlike manner, and that the
public sensitiVeness will not be shocked
by the noise, hustle and excitement of
traffic. What sane person could ask,
for instance, that a train reaching
Granger on the Union Pacific on Satur-
day night be held there until Monday
morning? Any intelligent person v-"- ID
say to run it through. The Anne.
people are such travelling people III
Sunday trains seem absolutely essentis
to their we'll being morally.
The Sunday sentiment is sometimes
carried to the extreme of crankiness.
We know family into which Sunday
paper cannot go. To handle such a
paper would be sacrilegious. and the ed.
tors, reporters, printers, pressmen and
carriers who get up the Sunday paper
are regarded as miserable sinners
bound for the bottomless pit; yet on
Monday morning the members of that
same family are eager for the paper,
and ravenously absorb the news; ap-
parently forgetting that they read of
Sunday happenings, written about on
Sunday and put in type and printed on
Sunday; whereas only small por-
ton of the labor on the Sunday morn.
ing paper was performed within the
twenty-four hours comprising the
Sabbath. We know another pious
Christian man who would no more ride
in 8 railway train on Sunday than he
would profane the name of the Deity or
do any other wicked thing. Yet be will
harness his horse and drive ten miles
on Sunday to ). little country
church, where he breaches occasionally,
going all the way by the side of the
railway track. There is not even COM
mon horse sense in such action, and
Christianity should be the very essence
of reason.
Laws which will forbid Sunday ex-
cursion trains, will stop the running of
freights and limit railway operations on
the Sabbath to the narrowest limits with
in the bounds ofreason, will receive the
of the people, for such laws
will be Christian in their conception
and operation, but statutes to prohibit
trains entirely would be as
productive of wickedness- as no laws
whatever on the subject.